No work and all play makes Karnataka Athletics Association a dull body

Kanteerava Stadium, the home of the Karnataka Amateur Athletics Association

Bengaluru, March 26: Rebel officials in the Karnataka Amateur Athletics Association (KAAA) have called for an "illegal and unfair" election to be called off in the wake of many district bodies not given voting rights. KAAA has been due for polls to elect its office-bearers since April 2015, but betrayed district officials, including vice-president and Arjuna awardee Ashwini Nachappa, want the process to be done in a fair manner. Their grouse - some of them were removed from the electoral college, while few also allege unfamiliar names were added in their place in the same list.

Vice-president steps out of line

An email sent to select officials of the KAAA is said to be the root cause of the entire saga. Sunil Kumar Shetty, a vice-president of the KAAA, called for the election to be held on April 8 through his email dated March 15. The disgruntled officials point out that only the secretary of the association, N Chandrashekhar Rai, is authorised to call for polls.

The term of the current KAAA office-bearers ended on April 26, 2015 and one attempt to conduct polls in July 2017 was stalled by a former secretary of the association, K Satyanarayana. The Karnataka high court then ordered the registrar of societies to conduct the elections if the KAAA failed to get its act right. So far, the registrar has not stepped in.

Vacant office

Additionally, these officials claim that they were not allowed to file their nominations by post as the circular issued by Shetty reached them only on March 21, two days before the March 23 deadline for filing the nominations. These officials, mostly from north Karnataka, reached Bengaluru's Sree Kanteerava Stadium, the premises of the KAAA, to deliver their nominations by hand. However, they claim that the KAAA office was deliberately kept vacant on March 22 to prevent them from sending their entries. They say they then emailed their nominations to the KAAA secretary Rai.

Rebel officials pose at the empty Karnataka Amateur Athletics Association office at the Sree Kanteerava Stadium — Rebel officials pose at the 'empty' Karnataka Amateur Athletics Association office at the Sree Kanteerava Stadium

The next day, however, seven district associations were not included in the electoral college. The chiefs from these district bodies allege they were kept out of the process and were replaced by stooges of Shetty.

Playing the North Karnataka card

Dharwad, Gadag, Bagalkot, Haveri, Ramanagara and Davanagere are the six district bodies not included in the electoral college. Another district body from Udupi was also absent in the list as that federation itself has two warring factions claiming recognition from the KAAA.

The dejected district bodies, all from north Karnataka except for Ramanagara, informed the registrar of societies about their predicament.

Snubbed by the registrar, the officials met Karnataka minister of co-operative societies, Ramesh Jarkiholi, who is also from Belagavi in north Karnataka. They played the north Karnataka card and requested him to pressure the registrar to intervene in the matter. T Tavade, Dharwad faction's secretary, says Jarkiholi called up the registrar and has promised to act on the issue.

G Parameshwar, who was until recently the home minister of Karnataka, is the KAAA president. Parameshwar, the Congress chief for Karnataka, has not been active in the KAAA for over two years.

Whose association is it anyway?

Few other officials, who were present during an interaction with the media on Monday (March 26), allege their names were replaced with bogus ones in the electoral college. The names of representatives from seven bodies - The Bangalore Rural District Athletic Association, Hassan District Amateur Athletic Association, Shivamogga District Athletic Association, Mandya District Athletics Association, Bijapur District Athletic Association, Chikkaballapura District Athletics Association and another one representing Karwar in Uttara Kannada - have raised eyebrows with others claiming that they are the recognised body for governing athletics in each of these regions.

A file picture of Ashwini Nachappa (right), a vice-president of the Karnataka Amateur Athletics Association, with cricketer Yuvraj Singh

Cancel and clear out

Nachappa and others have requested the registrar and government to take action and save the athletics body. "KAAA secretary Rai claims that he has no idea about the elections being called," Nachappa told reporters. "We request him to join our fight and stop this illegal election. The election cannot happen this way. We're appealing to the government and registrar through the media to cancel the call for this election. We want them to conduct it as per the book.

"We don't know who is pressuring the registrar not to act on this issue. If he fails to do so, we've no option but to file a contempt of court notice against the registrar and the KAAA for failing to obey the high court order."